Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- General note
- Introduction
- 1 Spinoza and his challenge
- 2 Hermann Cohen's concept of election
- 3 Franz Rosenzweig's return to the doctrine
- 4 The retrieval of the biblical doctrine
- 5 The rabbinic development of the doctrine
- 6 Two medieval views of election
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Some major Jewish thinkers cited
- Appendix 2
- Appendix 3
- Appendix 4
- Bibliography
- Index
Appendix 2
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- General note
- Introduction
- 1 Spinoza and his challenge
- 2 Hermann Cohen's concept of election
- 3 Franz Rosenzweig's return to the doctrine
- 4 The retrieval of the biblical doctrine
- 5 The rabbinic development of the doctrine
- 6 Two medieval views of election
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Some major Jewish thinkers cited
- Appendix 2
- Appendix 3
- Appendix 4
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Because Rosenzweig is quite unclear on this issue, interpreters have often seen his position on the traditional Jewish commandments as advocating subjectivism, that is, he seems to saying that only those laws each individual can experience as commandments revealed by God are to be observed. His difference from Buber, then, is that he does not see the traditional Jewish laws as being antithetical to a response to God's personal commandments ipso facto. (For more on their difference, see G. Bonola, “Franz Rosenzweig und Martin Buber: Die Auseinanderstezung über das Gesetz,” in W. Schmied-Kowarzik [ed.], Der Philosoph Franz Rosenzweig [Munich, 1988], 1:225ff.) I myself have drawn that same conclusion in earlier works. (See Law and Theology in Judaism [2 vols., New York, 1974–1976], 2:14–15; Jewish–Christian Dialogue [New York, 1989], 89ff) I now believe, however, that much of what Rosenzweig had to say along these lines was only the expression of his own individual situation, and that he was not advocating it as a general standard for the Jewish community as a whole. Thus in his well-known letter to the faculty of the Lehrhaus in November 1924, he calls this approach of not observing a Gesetz until he has experienced it as Gebot as das Besondere unsrer Situation (Briefe, ed. E. Rosenzweig [Berlin, 1935], no. 413, p. 521). Here unsrer surely refers to his own situation as one who was coming into Jewish faith and observance from an estranged background.
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- Information
- The Election of IsraelThe Idea of the Chosen People, pp. 259 - 261Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995